rds--and he looked the picture of health only
yesterday. I wish some one would lend us a child! Maybe the woman in
the next room will. He never saw it, and he'd not know the difference
between one child and another.'

"So mother went into the next room. It was let to a woman with one
child, and she was to sail for America the next day to join her
husband, who had written for her. She seemed to be poor, and mother had
no doubt that for a pound or so she would lend us the child; but when
she went into the room the mother was out, and the child was lying on
the bed asleep. Mother was very quick and clever. Our boy was so
changed with the convulsions that I would never have known him again;
and this boy was much the same size and age, and not very unlike him,
so she slipped off the child's nightgown and put poor Frank's clothes
on it, and dressed my dead child in the nightgown she took off, and put
it in the bed. She would not give me time to cry, but got into a
hackney coach and rode off to where we were to meet Harry. She told me
afterwards that she meant to take back the woman her child, if
possible; but, in case of not being able to do it, she got all our
luggage which was ready packed, into the hackney coach, and paid the
woman of the house all we owed her.

"When I saw Harry again he looked changed--far graver and duller. I was
full of sorrow about Frank; and I cried sore when I saw his father. But
then he thought I only cried, out of cunning, to get something more out
of him. Harry took the child in his arms and looked at it all over.
'Poor thing,' says he--'poor thing!' and I saw a tear drop on that
stranger's face. My own boy--his own boy--he had never touched, and
never looked at. I was jealous and fierce at both of them, in my grief
and my rage; but mother was pleased to see him so taken up with the
child, for she thought it would be all the better for us.

"'Well,' says he, 'are you ready to go on board this afternoon? for the
ship will get off to night with the tide, and I will see you all right.'

"'Yes,' says mother, 'we are all ready; but we want to know what
allowance you are willing to make. You must take into consideration
that we are banished, and have to leave everybody we know. What will
you allow for Elizabeth, and what for little Frank?'

"'I think,' said Harry, speaking slow, 'that I will arrange differently
about the child. As he is my son, I think he would be better in other
hands than yours.